Stress-associated developmental reprogramming in moss protonemata by synthetic activation of the common symbiosis pathway.

Symbioses between angiosperms and rhizobia or arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are controlled through a conserved signaling pathway. Microbe-derived, chitin-based elicitors activate plant cell surface receptors and trigger nuclear calcium oscillations, which are decoded by a calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CCaMK) and its target transcription factor interacting protein of DMI3 (IPD3). Genes encoding CCaMK and IPD3 have been lost in multiple non-mycorrhizal plant lineages yet retained among non-mycorrhizal mosses.

Branch architecture in Ginkgo biloba: wood anatomy and long shoot-short shoot interactions.

Premise: Ginkgo, centrally placed in seed plant phylogeny, is considered important in many phylogenetic and evolutionary studies. Shoot dimorphism of Ginkgo has been long noted, but no work has yet been done to evaluate the relationships between overall branch architecture and wood ring characters, shoot growth, and environmental conditions. •

Methods: Branches, sampled from similar canopy heights, were mapped with the age of each long shoot segment determined by counting annual leaf-scar series on its short shoots.

Differences in the scaling of area and mass of Ginkgo biloba (Ginkgoaceae) leaves and their relevance to the study of specific leaf area.

Premise Of The Study: The manner in which the area of the leaf lamina (A) scales with respect to the dry mass of the lamina (M) is an important functional trait that is correlated with whole-plant growth rates and habitat preferences across diverse species. However, the extent to which the scaling between these two variables differs among leaves collected from different types of shoots within the canopy of a tree is poorly understood. Should they exist, significant differences in the A vs.

Patterns of diversity in leaves from canopies of Ginkgo biloba are revealed using Specific Leaf Area as a morphological character.

Premise Of The Study: The difference reported in the literature for the Specific Leaf Area (SLA, cm(2)/g) of leaves on short- and long-shoots of Acer rubrum could mean that SLA can serve as a quantitative morphological trait. Our survey of SLA in canopies of Ginkgo biloba sampled a different clade of seed plants to investigate this morphological phenomenon. Such a survey in this dioecious taxon, and one in which a single canopy may have juvenile and reproductive portions, as well as one where canopies bear leaves of several shapes, examine these additional morphological factors as well as any long-shoot short-shoot differences.

Reproductive short-shoots of Ginkgo biloba: A quantitative analysis of the disposition of axillary structures.

Ginkgo biloba, the only living representative in an otherwise extinct clade, is of pivotal importance to understanding seed plant phylogeny. Although G. biloba and its fossil relatives have been studied for over two centuries, there are both gaps and contradictions in the information available.

Codon usage patterns distort phylogenies from or of DNA sequences.

Papers reporting phylogenetic reconstructions often include discussion of the nature of third position substitutions and have often treated third position data differently from other data. This paper extends such considerations. Plant biotechnologists interested in high levels of expression of foreign proteins have accumulated information on preferences for otherwise synonymous codons.